Double Messieurs

Stylistically distinctive (with a rhythmically inventive use of jump cuts), impressively acted (by Jean-Francois Stevenin, Yves Afonso, and Carole Bouquet), and simultaneously unpredictable and rather bewildering as narrative, Jean-Francois Stevenin's second feature, made in 1986, looks like nothing else in contemporary French cinema. Stevenin, who is mainly known as a rather ubiquitous actor, plays a character who accidentally runs into a boyhood chum (Afonso); together they decide to pay a surprise visit to another mutual childhood friend who now lives outside Grenoble--a mysterious figure who never makes an appearance and the film basically charts their long wait together, largely in the company of the missing friend's wife (Bouquet). Arresting visually as well as aurally (the film is in direct sound), Double Messieurs manages to make all of its characters and their behavior sad as well as mysterious; a sense of broken dreams and an irretrievable past lurks behind the fitful, random actions and picturesque settings. Crew members are utilized in the cast, and Stevenin's bizarre notations on the "buddy" movie stay firmly lodged in one's memory. A Chicago premiere. (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Saturday and Sunday, January 9 and 10, 6:00 and 8:00, 443-3737)